Soil Saving Composting – the good the bad and the ugly
Everybody wants to do it, but most people are unable to do it right, composting is a brilliant way to dispose of waste (garden and kitchen), is odor-free, generates garden soil essences and will not entice vermin like rats and mice. Here in Delta, the city sells Delta’s Backyard Composter Program and Soil Saver composters for $35 but just buying one doesn’t ensure that you will become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Once you have set-up and are using one of these composters there are many things that can go wrong. If you discover rats looking for a free meal near your composter, you aren’t doing it right. The things that make composting a foul buffet for vermin is not taking care of your compost, too many fats, meat, dairy and moisture in your pile. It all comes down to controlling the moisture levels, which is the key to effective and sanitary composting: too much green waste and the compost pile can get wet. When moisture levels rise past 75 percent, the oxygen is displaced and generates an environment for anaerobic metabolism (energy in the absence of oxygen). The by-product of this anaerobic process is carbon-based acids that smell like rotting food and this attracts the neighborhood rodents. You need to break up the compost materials to let the oxygen flow which means a ratio of one part green organic waste (kitchen scraps) to two parts brown carbon producing waste like leaves or manure. The perfect composing moisture content is 55% which can be achieved with the 1:2 ratio of green to brown. The best brown waste is horse manure because it has a lot of frothy carbons that create the proper ventilation, its high nitrogen materials and lots of bacteria that are perfect for composting.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner tsawwassen B.C. Randy Bilesky BsF CPA
https://gogreenpestcontrol.ca/soil-saving-comp…bad-and-the-ugly/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/soil-saving-composting-good-bad-ugly-randy-bilesky/?published=t
